JOURNAL

And on the 5th day he tested negative for Covid! Praise!

I still have a bit of a cough, a bit of a runny nose, and am physically pretty exhuasted. But holy hell, do I feel worlds better today. Even from just twelve hours ago. A finnicky little thing, The Rona, I tell ya what.

All four of us in the house got it. One day after another, quite literally. My mom got it last and is still positive and experiencing the toughest symptoms, it seems. Myself, my brother, and my youngest tested negative yesterday and today. But it is so crazy how varied each of our experiences and symptoms and severity were and have been.

My kid probably had the least severe case and got through it the quickest. My brother second to him. I, third. And my mom coming in at forth. Which indicates somethingg about age and overall wellness of health going into the thing, I think.

I had wanted to better document my experience with The Rona, but couldn't get myself to focus when sat down in front of the computer to do so and neglected to think of taking notes in real time during the whole ordeal. Dangit.

Best of my ability style, and in retrospect as I come out of the thing, here's kinda how my experience went down.

Got sent home from work with my brother when he tested positive at work after a number of people had called out. I tested negative, but being that he and I share a vehicle and live together - in addition to working together, it was deemed a smart move for me to leave early with him after him testing positive. The plan was to work from home, whether or not I eventually (and, as luck would have, invariably) test positive myself. My brother muscled through each and every day of work while he still had The Rona. I, on the other hand, made it through one day of work after testing positive and after that it was just misery with a side of more misery. That first night after testing positive I spent half asleep with three blankets over me while having the chills one minute and the next minute I was stripped naked sprawled out on my bed with three fans blowing on me and a window open to let the 34° air in. First fever took place, not surrprisingly, over the first night and made it all the way up to 102.5°. Fever dreams were absolutely mad, as well. Surrealism and oddities of a sort I've rarely dreamed and I won't even bother to attempt conveying because, well, I'll just fail miserably short at doing so. No explaination of dreams is ever as wild as the dream itself and most of the time after you've explained a dream to someone they just look at you with a blank stare. So yeah. I'll just say, again, easily some of the most wild dreams I've ever had - and I've slept with a head full of LSD on occasion, as well as a head full of Psilocybin more than once.

Next morning I woke up feeling like death had taken me over in earnest. Getting out of bed was difficult, quite literally. I had trouble breathing in general, and simply could not breathe through my nose due to it being so congested. I was coughing like mad, fever was still hanging on for dear life but had gone down a bit, the nose was like a leaky faucet I had zero control of, and the level of lethargy I was experiencing is something I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully put into words - and that is not hyperbole. I have never in my life been so weak and so tired. Ever. And so I slept. Then I slept some more. I followed up all that sleeping with even more sleepinng. When, by about dinner hour, I finally came back to the world of the living on my own volition, I was still feeling terribly miserable but felt the level of misery had dropped signifcantly - but not to anything below monumental, in terms of numbers or ranking or whatever.

Up until the time of me penning this entry on 10/22 and it being well into the latenight hours, up until now pretty much all I did was sleep or try to sleep or do some weird thing that's sleep but not sleep - and when felt well enough to be up and about, tuned into Twitch jungle/drum'n'bass streams on the PC with a beer or two and a pull from the old blinker. There were a few big jungle/drum'n'bass streams this week I didn't want to miss... but, ultimately missed about 85% of 'em and only remember about 5% of the 15% percent I managed to show up for. And, honestly, kinda weird to be that bothered by it and the whole situation being a point of concern while in the clultches of The Rona, but with not working and then sleeping so much, I was really looking to them to be a momentary escape. Instead, it's all a blur.

Speaking of blur, that is actually one of my personally biggest symptoms from The Rona, outside of the purely physical illness side of things and odd as hell fever dreams. Covid brainfog is a very real thing. The ability to focus was pretty much gone, it's still not great (it's taken me over three hours to get this far in this entry due to being distracted). The entire thing, though, was like an exercise in figuring out what day it was and what time it was and navigating that with needs and wants and capabilities and feeling ultimately defeated when trying to forumlate a plan, for absolute mental immobilitiy - if only momentarily. With a little work and hard focus, I was able to get things straight and sort out my shit. But man, I have nevr worked so hard to figure out if I need to take my dog out or if I'd smoked a cigarette too recently. Ugh. Do no recommend.

Even now, I'm having a bit of trouble keeping this all in order and of relevance, truthfully.

I will say this. I lost about fifteen pounds, because I could only eat about once a day. And even that once a day was an absolute chore. I had zero appetite through the whole thing - physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise. I even wanted to drink beer and whisky less, and did so. However, I def still drank when I was up and in front of my PC in the evenings. I also continued to smoke - both cigarettes and other things. I went from 1/4 pack of smokes a day to a single 100 menthol in a day, in terms of cigarettes. And by combination of issues with my weed pen battery and cart, along with inability to focus very well, smoke a metric ton less of weed I think.

I got the intital vaccination when The Rona first broke big, and also got two more boosters. In addition, I wore mask for about 75% of all time since Covid first broke. I am not saying vaccines and boosters don't work - and this post is not an invitation to debate it. But, based on others I know who did not get the vax or booster(s), I think I'd take my experience over theirs.

At the end of the day, all I've really had to worry much about is my health and The Rona, and drum'n'bass music a little, so that's the core of this update. Covid? Do not recommend.